Genesis
by Curt Kenobi
Summary: Remy's early years are vague at best. But everyone has a mother. And, even when forgotten or unknown, everyone has a beginning to their story. Drawing from backstory presented in The End: Heroes and Martyrs. Somewhat AU.
1. Intro

**Title:** Genesis  
**Author:** Curt Kenobi  
**Fandom:** X-Men (draws from _X-Men: The End, Heroes and Martyrs_)  
**Rating:** T/PG-13  
**Summary:** Remy's early years are vague at best. But everyone has a mother. And, even when forgotten or unknown, everyone has a beginning to their story. (A bit AU)  
**Disclaimer:** Sinister, Remy, when he shows up, and all recognisable characters involved with them are all Marvel's (but damn, I'd like to have grown-up Remy LeBeau – not for profit, just for some fun ;) ) Only one that belongs to me is his _maman_ Alix/Roxanne, and a few minor but noticeable supporting characters.  
**A/N:** The pacing might be a bit manic on this one. The idea and first parts all came to me in a rush and even after fleshing out the rough, it still is a little buggy. But I just really wanted a fleshed backstory for Remy cos I've a rekindled addiction to him, and wanted to try at a solo X-Men tale. Other projects aren't quite abandoned; the ideas for them just aren't coming as easily as they are for this one, and school's still a...disagreeable entity. Postings to be erratic as usual.

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**((INTRO))**

_Her name was Alexandrie Renée Delacroix. She preferred just simply "Alix." She hadn't lived a glamorous life by anyone's means, but she did what she needed to live…for however short a time it was. She never expected the turns it would take, especially near the end. _

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Her name was Alexandrie Renée Delacroix. She preferred just simply "Alix." Last names had no importance here. Given names – even chosen names – didn't; names were just a label for the body.

She'd lived the streets for over half her life. She didn't remember what life with her family – just her mother – had been like. It didn't matter, she supposed. If it did, she wouldn't have been living this one.

She was told – quite often – she was "stunning." …"Beautiful." …"Perfect." Perhaps she was, with her thick, flaming auburn hair and crystalline hazel eyes – her porcelain skin and delicate features that belied her strength. All the same, though, she'd laugh it off and reply, "So just what do you want done this night, _monsieur_?" It was all part of the job, the flattery and dance. She knew every note.

In February, she met _him_. She thought it was something routine, if slightly offbeat. She'd been courted and had courted oh-so-many times. He – his name was Nathaniel, he said – was not like other men, she noted that from the off. She didn't feel that tingle of excitability and anticipation that brushed her senses with her other clients. He hadn't gone off to a room with her that very night she first approached him. No, he instead had bantered with her, though he did appraise her. All men did. But she from then on set her sights on this shadowy man, and all the while thought she held the reigns.

Nathaniel was tall and broad, dark and foreboding. His voice was sharp, dark – it sunk into her every time he spoke, even while the toning slid over her like oil. His accent was so very classically British.

He'd intrigued her. So she had spun her magic. She didn't ever once contemplate that she may have been in danger. She'd become too over-confident and irresponsible in her twenty-four years.

But to be honest, she never stood a chance.

"You possess a magnificent body, _mademoiselle _Alexandrie," he lavished upon her, night after night, in the corner of the club that became habitually left alone just for them. He'd offer her fine red wine. He told her that her preferred nickname didn't do her justice or dignity, and said her real one with perfect pronunciation. "_Il est_" – his dark eyes bore into her after raking over her immodestly – _"…__très__…magnifique._"

"_Oui, Monsieur. _I bet you say that to all the pretty maidens. Especially the ladies – and the whores. So tell me what you _really _want," she spat back, time and again. But nevertheless, there was still a slight preening to her presence, a silent offer contradicting her curt words. Subtly, she'd reach out with that extra sense, trying to gauge him, though she never picked up anything conclusive. And the stranger – M. Essex – just persisted. He understood her standoffish come-hithers were not dismissals, but crude affection – he also felt her searching and knew it for what it was…and he wouldn't have given up to begin with.

Near the end of the month, she finally gave into fancy. His flattery and darkness, his refinery and dangerous edge, were simply too intriguing.

"So, _ma magnifique mademoiselle,_ will you yet relent to me?" he lightly chided as she sauntered over. He offered her his hand. With a gracious incline of her head, auburn waves sliding over her face, she accepted and they walked out into the cool Parisian night.

"I do believe I will, _Monsieur _Essex. You've been _très _persistent and a _mademoiselle _such as myself would be a fool to ignore your attentions."

"A fool," he said meditatively. Then, after a moment, he stopped and pulled her before him. She looked up over her shoulder, trying to catch his eyes, somewhat caught off-guard by the sudden manoeuvre, but not unfamiliar with the position. It made her feel somewhere between excited and unnerved. He leant down and kissed her, after a breathless moment on her end. She was surprised at how cool his lips were, even as her own heated.

"I _do _mean what I say, _mademoiselle_," he said, his chill hand curved about her throat while the other kept her back pinned to him. His voice was a dark growl. Her breathing hitched. His hand twitched where it was about her neck, fingers tightening ever so slightly. His sharp thumbnail dug into the sensitive flesh where her jaw and neck met. "I _will_ have your body, madam."

She should have listened to her haywire senses, her internal alarms going off like klaxons. But she didn't. Leave the sixth senses and foresight to _Grand-mère_. She had decided long ago to ignore her "inklings" when she could, though ever since she had met Nathaniel, she'd acknowledged them more than ever.

Instead, she conceded, forcing a flippant air: "_Certainement, monsieur._"

His short chuckle at that made her panic. Without words, it told her that she had horribly misunderstood him.

Her next moment was blackness.

Unknowingly, she'd just sold her soul and body to the Devil, or as close as she'd come to meeting him.

...And it was in something quite akin to Hell she awoke.

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(The lyric in the page break is from "Fascination Street" by the Cure.)


	2. Part One

**Thank you Chibified Youkai 101 and Brazos for your reviews! **

A good deal of this chapter is a flashback, as will much of the next chapter.

A few notes:  
1) Sinister is living up to his name, of course. Nothing graphic, just hinted.  
2) In _Heroes and Martyrs, _there's a flashback of Sinister's life. Basically: He pledged himself to Apocalypse and Apocalypse granted him _seeming_ immortality. He came to realise that that wasn't quite the case -- he _did_ age, just slowly. So, he began to transfer his psyche and abilities into younger hosts. Initially, he needed a woman to give birth to this younger host, though later he developed the technology to grow a clone to transfer his psyche into it.  
3) I am totally ignorant when it comes to French, so bear with me, correct me if need be. Thanks :)

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**((PART ONE))**

Eyeless skulls watched her from the walls with gap-toothed leers. He had grown increasingly frustrated with her, day after day. She didn't much care. Absently, she found it odd for a thing that claimed to be devoid of feeling to seem that way. She was all but completely shattered by now. She was the prisoner of a monster. It was not only the glowing red eyes he was revealed to have, no – but more so, his calm sadism and what he'd done to her. She'd stopped praying soon in. What did the Lord want with a whore's pleas anyways? And while the Blessed Mother may have felt her anguish, she was begotten with a sinister demon's spawn. Perhaps this was her penance. For the way she had lived, for being foolish enough to willingly fall into this devil's arms.

He, M. Essex – _Sinister_, he had told her he was often called, and she believed it a well-earned sobriquet, if an understatement – had laid out her fate to her early on. He had meant quite literally, "I will have your body." He would and did. Currently, in this lab, he did not have the "advanced technology he would have preferred." Something about wanting to take advantage on his holiday here in France of _her_, and willing to use the basic facility he had here. Besides, he had a morbid fascination with her, and the rudimentary facilities he had here made it much more…personal. Thusly, she was to be kept about, kept alive. Not taken apart and constructed from. He himself would do all the conducting and observing.

He said he had perfected the genes he desired his "next incarnation" to have. She would be little more than an incubator. A womb for use.

"I will be perfect. And you, _mademoiselle _Alexandrie, with your own ability – and your beauty, shall serve to make me even more so. You don't realise just how great a service you shall be – but then, you're quite remiss in realising your own potential, after all." His metallic fingers had caressed her cheek. She had turned away from him, unable to go anywhere, bound as she had been to a lab table. She didn't want to see that metallic visage, so unlike what she had been introduced to – and yet the same. The skin wasn't the tan she was used to – no, now it gleamed like silver metal – but there was still the goatee and chiselled features, the slicked raven hair. But then the unnerving ink-black lips would part, revealing sharp teeth all around. She'd rather ignore him. He didn't concede to her disdain, though, and persisted contact. "But, I'm afraid, my dear, as for all things with a short, designated purpose, you shall be disposed of in the end."

It was then, with that cold, monotone, straightforward admission, that most of her caved.

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**(four months ago, right after conceding to Essex's request)**

_She woke with a gasp. The lights her eyes were met with were blindingly bright – she tried to shrink away reflexively, but found her arms, waist and ankles bound with thick metal restraints. The table beneath her was flat, uncomfortable. Gone was the nice dress she'd had for two years now, instead a lab gown covered her thinly. Frantic, her hazel eyes searched about for a clue – for anything that might tell her where the hell she was or help free her from these restraints. All she saw was medical equipment. The walls were silver to either side and to her feet. She laid her head back and tilted her chin up to see behind her. Skulls and bones mortared to make a wall greeted her. The catacombs?_

"_Tsk, tsk."_

_At the admonishing tone, she jerked her head up. And screamed._

"_Now, come, my dear. Certainly that's no way to greet your host."_

"_You are no host; you are a monster!" she burst out, struggling against her immovable bonds. With a sigh, Essex moved forward, and as Alix watched, his form changed. Seemingly melting away, the English gentleman visage disappeared and coming to a stop by her side was some metallic manlike creature. His lips were black and his eyes glowed an unearthly red. Alix stilled._

"_What…are…you?" she whispered. Had her hands been unbound, she would have crossed herself. _

"_Not much different from yourself, my dear," Essex – if that was what he was even called – replied offhandedly, his attention rather on the items in a tray on the small metal table beside him. "A step forward in the human evolutionary process – though for myself, I was rather…created, instead of just a natural talent such as you."_

"_What do you mean? What are you saying? _Why am I here?_" Alix's voice got more hysterical as she continued._

"_Mutants, mademoiselle. Those born with gifts that far surpass that of the normal _homo sapien._ The fittest in this everlasting game of survival. And your ability, if I'm not mistaken, is a rare and underestimated, but coveted one: the ability to feel and manipulate the emotions of individuals. Is it not?" Black lips twisted, sharp arrows of teeth making a mockery of a smirk. _

"_I – I…no. No." Alix shook her head, shocked. Yes, she could feel the feelings of others, but had blocked her reception to them early on. Manipulate? She didn't think so. But how could he know this? …She wasn't a mutant. She was just a young woman. Just a whore, whose choices had never been the wisest. Anything she felt through a sixth sense was simply intuition._

"_Really, now?" he mocked, picking up items from the tray. Alix wanted to know what, but didn't want to take her eyes off this creature. _

_He gazed up, apparently lost in thought as he put together the needle he had picked up from the tray. "I…I will be perfect. And you, mademoiselle Alexandrie, with your own ability – and your beauty, shall serve to make me even more so. You don't realise just how great a service you shall be – but then, you're quite remiss in realising your own potential, after all." A metallic hand reached out and caressed her cheek._

_A hard, cold chill raced through Alix at his musing, and in disgust at his cold touch. She looked to the ceiling. "What are you saying, monsieur—"_

_He drew away, pressing the needle into the rubber top of a small vial and drawing up its contents. "My name _is_ Nathaniel Essex, dear. But I haven't much been known by it since the late 1800s. Most know me simply as Sinister."_

_Burning hazel eyes turned back upon him. "You are a monster, Monsieur Sinistre. A deceitful, evil, conniving monster. Now: why…am I…here?" She had always been one to stand her ground while she could. _

_Clear liquid arched in a fountainhead from the gleaming needle tip as he depressed the plunger just slightly. _

"_**Don't do it**," she said, forcing steel to her tone._

"_I do not believe you are in the position to make any demands, my dear. You don't know how to use your gift to aid you—"_

"_I am most certain I could figure out how," Alix interjected, though he kept talking._

"—_but I should oblige you, seeing as your importance to me." His cold hand took a firm grip of her left arm and the next instance the needle tip had slipped underneath her skin into a vein on the inside of her elbow. Precisely, he depressed the plunger, dispensing the clear liquid._

"_What – what is that?" Alix watched in shocked horror._

"_A paralyser. You will still be able to speak, but I don't need you causing undue commotion."_

"'_Undue commotion'?"_

_Sinister ignored her repeat of his words and went over to the counters along the wall. Alix closed her eyes and began to recite prayers. But a nagging question kept yelling in her mind over the words she knew by rote. _Why?_ It echoed and got louder and louder until it finally fell from her lips. "**Pourquoi? Pourqoui je?**" Now unable to turn her head, she slid her eyes towards the ribboned cape and the back of the silver monster. He was shaking his head at her words. Like she was an errant, ignorant child._

"_Why. …A good question, I suppose. To be frank, I don't really need you beyond some genetic material. I am a skilled geneticist – I know how to create clones and have been for a time, though, as always with experimentation of that sort, it can be rather hit-and-miss. I personally do not like the idea of a 'miss' with a future incarnation of myself, especially when I have taken great pains to perfect my genetic makeup to make me a formidable mutant of my own means, and not just those that were bestowed upon me in addition to the one I already had. Therefore, as creating life the...more or less, 'old-fashioned way' is much more reliable, it's the process I'll choose._

"_So, I suppose your 'why' is because you fit my needs and I have a uncalled for fascination with you. Suffice it to say: When one is offered a boon, you must seize it – especially if it's not an unpleasant one either." He gave her a pointed look with those glowing red eyes. "…As I am quite sure you understand, mademoiselle."_

_She hated herself. She did understand. All too well. That was how she had conducted herself most of her life. It was ironic that she would be the pawn in someone else's game for profit, for advancement. There were many who had been the pawn in hers – _he_ was to have been a pawn in her game. And instead, she never realised the tables had already been turned. It had happened a few times before – a lot early on, but she never imagined such a devious plan on the other side. To be raped, all her money and anything valuable upon her stolen, beatings, death – all those she expected at some time. But never had she expected to be a guinea pig for some creature talking about "survival of the fittest" and mutants and how she suited his plan that had something to do evidently with both. "Future incarnations" and creating life and clones. It all was too unreal. _

_Sinister had been at the counters again, doing something. Alix was too lost in her own thoughts – too lost at what was going on. Instead of pondering it further, for she feared hyperventilation if she did, she simply blanked her mind and went back to the prayers. Offhandedly, she thought of the sheer audacity she had always had, showing up for Mass on Sundays. Confessions were always an odd affair, when she offered one. But when she had been twelve, new to the streets and thought she had started to lose her mind, what with feeling a million different ways at once and not at all sure why, even as she figured out how to ignore them, she had met Grand-mère. The old woman was a diviner, and counselled any. _"Everyone needs a constant,"_ she had said, blind eyes set in a heavily lined face looking at Alix's waif-like form, milky blue beneath white curls bound with a long navy blue scarf. _"You've begun already to distance yourself from who you should be. Strength of will like that is to be celebrated, but not at the cost it may have to you. One day you will come to realise this. But until then, you are off-balance, and your life has no holds to begin with. To counter this adrift nature, you must find something to ground you."

_As she now recited the rote pleas, she came to realise that she had never really followed Grand-mère's advice…and that the old woman was right._

_Booted footsteps back towards her made her open her eyes. Sinister had another device now, some sort of long syringe. _

"_Don't do it," she said again, but the steel was not there, though most of the heat still was. She realised, though, that she really didn't have much of a choice. _

"_You understand the futility of that," Sinister stated dismissively. "Now, for the procedure."_

_Tears streamed down Alix's face minutes later as the horrible reality of her fate set in with her. And just like with the emotions she had received as a child, she started to block out the knowledge as much as she could. _

_Another needle was pressed into a vein, though she didn't feel it and was staring numbly at the ceiling; she noticed Sinister's movements peripherally. Suddenly, her eyelids feel like lead. _

"_Qu—quoi?…" she whispered, fighting against her eyes closing reflexively. Honestly, sleep was probably a good option right now._

"_A sedative. I don't wish to have you in hysterics or catatonic. This should hopefully reduce the chances of that."_

_Alix couldn't think anymore. Her eyes closed, and deep sleep claimed her._

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_(The lyrics in the page break are from "Lullaby" by the Cure.)_


	3. Part Two

Apologies on the terminal wait. I'm really awful at updating anything approaching a regular, decent schedule. But I do have it all planned out -- 5 to 7 more parts, I think. (The next one will actually be up later today or tomorrow.) And more apologies for the continuation in flashback-motivated all italics.

**Much thanks to everyone's kind reviews and interest!** **Chibified Youkai 101 **(thank you so much!),** Brazos**,** Zephyr**,** Brandy**,** Gator Bait**,** BJ2** (I was absolutely gobsmacked to get a review from you; along with Xanax, Morgana and Court, your fics really got me hooked on Lomy), **Black Water **and **Peppymint **(Alix is French -- sorry; I don't remember if I replied to that or not) and everyone else that's read!

I hope this doesn't disappoint. And: Please direct all French errors to my Google sidebar translation thingamabob. ;)

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**((PART TWO))**

**(The day after)**

_Consciousness came to her slowly, like peeling off layers. A slight awareness returning, manifesting itself in a light dream of running on a sun-soaked beach, though the sand instead of being grainy felt like running upon cotton. Then smell reached her, dissolving from the imagined moist brine of ocean air…but this wasn't a scent she was used to. It was musty, chill. It made her think…_

_An image of a skull, browned with age filled her vision suddenly and she woke with a gasp, sitting bolt upright, the thick quilt and sheets falling from her shoulders._

Thick quilt and sheets?…

_Eyes wide and mind still reeling, Alix surveyed her surroundings. She was greeted once again by the yellow-brown nameless skeletons' bones that made up a back wall and the silver metal of the side ones. There was a glowing blue light field across from her, whereas in the other room there had been another silver wall and a door. No matter the illusion of openness – she was still in a cage. _

_But it was a lot more hospitable, this room…. There was a small writing desk, and a cubicle housing a toilet and sink._

_She was in a _bed_. An honest-to-God bed. And it was comfortable. The blankets were thick and warm. Absently, her fingers ran about the wide blue interlocking rings that were part of the stitched design of the quilt. She felt odd as she did. While she was not sure if it was from whatever drugs Sinister had shot into her system, she felt it hadn't anything to do with chemicals. _

_As her fingers tripped over the design, she mused it must be hand-stitched. Just a feeling… And it was old. …Important, somehow._

_What was she doing? She shouldn't be musing over some quilt – she needed to get out. She was being held captive! _

_Alix jumped up from the bed and ran towards the field. It glowed and a low hum resonated from where it originated in the ends of the metal walls. Wary, Alix kept a fair distance from it. What good would it serve if she electrocuted herself? She wanted out, yes, but she didn't want to die. Across from her, more macabre remnants of lives past shaped a long wall._

"Me libérer_!!!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. She repeated it again in English. "Release me! Let me OUT!!! _Monstre_! _Salaud_! LET ME OUT!!!"_

_Hazel eyes keenly surveyed the hall, having given up on disabling the blue light-field wall. Too many cons. Maybe she could rely on what got her in this situation in the first place – her wiles. All she needed was for him to show—_

_Suddenly, just at the end of the hall, came bootsteps. _

"_You monster! You vile bastard! Let me go! Let me out of here!" Alix raged, growling in her frustration of not being able to throw or hit something. She had been collected until his face had come into view, and then something primal came over her. Something scared. She paced along the wall, glaring._

"_Do quiet," Sinister said offhandedly, coming to stand before her on the other side of the field. He showed indifference to her outburst. "And do calm down. I will _not_ have you ruining this process."_

_Alix stopped. Process. Process? What was he talking about? Why did it – why should she know what he meant? She knew that she _should_ know what he was talking about, but there came a blankness when she tried. _

"_Process?"_

_A raven brow arched, slightly bemused. But the expression passed as fast as it had come, and his brow furrowed as he frowned. "Do not play coy, Alexandrie."_

"Ne parle pas comme si vous me connaissez, monsieur_ – Do _not_ speak as if you know me!" she spat. It was pointless, but automatic. She met his red eyes – distorted to a lavender purple through the blue wall – evenly. "Process. What…process?"_

_Evidently she had blocked it out. Somewhat surprising, but nevertheless, an accounted for happenstance. He dismissed it with a wave of his hand. "We will discuss the matter later. Perhaps after you have eaten?" She was still in a vital stage – he couldn't compromise it by having her break down. The young woman was volatile as it was._

_Alix unconsciously felt out, feeling that he was sincere. But…_

"_What is that?"_

_Sinister was aware of her empathic probe. "What?"_

"_That…remoteness. You do not …_feel. _I can – I know that you are being honest – for now." She gave him a pointed look, telling him that she did not trust him whatsoever, but understood her disadvantage – though she planned to rectify that, as soon as the opportunity arose. "But you do not feel as I remember people feeling."_

_Sinister smiled thinly. He turned and left back down the hall, saying simply as he left, "That is because I am devoid of all but productive feelings, a gift my master saw fit to endow me with."_

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**(two weeks later)**

_He had lied – he had not retold her what "process" he spoke of. And she had forgotten it. But as days ticked by tediously, she found herself mentally revisiting the subject. Every time she thought about this gleaming monster with his glowing red eyes and the red diamond set into his forehead, with his black lips and shark's teeth, and his English voice saying _"I will not have you ruining this process," _more reaction came from her mind each time. The full-body shudder of revulsion and sick, cold terror she was at when she thought of it now was currently enough for her, so she pushed it to the back of her mind, occupying herself with books from the small table in her cell. For her own morbid humour, she was listlessly absorbing Mary Shelley's _Frankenstein._ When she couldn't take that, she found herself drawn to the more lyrical prose of _Interview with the Vampire._ Neither was particularly uplifting in any sense of the world, and she probably lost most of the story from her rather rudimentary reading skills, but for small moments, she got enough from them to let her forget she was in a two metre by three metre cell in the catacombs._

_He came about every day to leave her food, and left just as purposefully as he appeared. He'd taken her out of her cell and back to a lab, running tests, which he didn't elaborate on, but she felt a sense of deep satisfaction that made her stomach turn. Recently, growing restless and antsy with the isolation, Alix had started to reach out her sense to him, however off it might feel. She was having nightmarish flashes at night – recollections, she had identified them as, of her first moments in this place. The lab had set them off. She recalled him telling her about what her "ability" entailed – not just sensing emotions, but also potentially manipulating them. She wondered if that was truly possible. She knew she was certainly more aware of his – and from a greater distance than she knew previously possible._

_Four days after his tests – about her second week in his captivity, she thought – she sensed his peculiar emotional signature before she heard his bootfalls come down the hall – that feeling almost like a void, cold and empty, but driven and sharp-edged. He held a tray in hand – the same sight that greeted her three times regularly everyday. She looked from under her lashes over at him as he came to the forcefield, trying hard to quell the incandescent rage that surged from its smouldering every time she even _thought_ of the bastard now. His eyes were narrowed beneath that eerie red diamond set into his forehead. She wondered absently about it – such an odd marking; was it naturally occurring or did it have meaning? Slightly disgusted at herself for that, she resolutely returned to her book._

"_We must talk," he said shortly. Feigning easy disinterest – an almost ingrained mannerism – Alix looked up from the paperback's pages. _

"_Whatever about, monsieur? The foolishness of keeping a whore captive?" _

_The baring of teeth held no humour, just cold cruelty. "About your most inconvenient repression of things pertinent to the success of my work."_

_His words brought a flash of memory to the forefront of Alix's mind. Not so much visual as emotional. _Restraints holding her down. Sinister looking down upon her. Cold touch. Cold, cutting emotions. …Fear – fear fading into sickness. Degradation. Humiliation. Worthlessness. Disgust. Self-pity.

_No. The memory had been there just under the surface. The emotions. Alix had pushed it all away, just as she had so many times before, before the full memory could replay and emblazon itself forever in her mind, quashing the emotions – those potent, crippling emotions, locking them down. Actively ignoring them. It was second nature. If it weren't, she would have lost her mind early on. Still, the possibility threatened if she didn't take care to "forget" – to block things away. She had wanted to with this – but there it was, the truth stabbing in her mind, in her chest._

"_We really need not…" she said quietly, working hard past how the emotions of the memory coupled with Sinister's void of a presence were choking her. Nausea from the negative sense memories and flashes of images waved over her and she suddenly felt quite weary, and acutely caged._

_Sinister raised a curious eyebrow. "So be it…" he allowed slowly. "And don't forget the importance of maintaining this body, mademoiselle. You are a vessel for my use. I will do whatever I deem necessary to ensure the fruit of my labour comes out in the best possible condition."_

"D'accord,_" was gritted out as Alix rubbed her temples, knees drawn up to her chest. She could feel Sinister intensely; right there in her senses, cold and critically observant with an inhumanly cool, detached air. He didn't have to experience this sickness, this hurt – hell, for what Alix knew, she believed it likely he never had. Ever. That simmering rage bubbled up renewed in indignation. _

_And she did something she occasionally did, but never realised because it was an unconscious act: She pushed her emotions _out_, at him._

_Sinister was unprepared for the sudden onslaught – he had figured the girl to be resigned to her fate, the spark to her fire guttered. She barely knew anything about her ability other that she knew how to interest men and which ones were interested but not obviously violent. She barely used her talent at all. In an unproductive way, Sinister was impressed by the obvious strength of her personal shields. _

_He never expected her to realise consciously how to project her emotions –unconsciously, she automatically projected lust and interest upon a target; that he had realised after _wanting_ her when they first met, in a way he had no need to. But that was easy enough for the most part for him to disregard._

_This deep anguish and hatred that she psychically pressed upon him now – those emotions found a long-buried kinship within him. The anger, overwhelming, tingled his own well-schooled hatred of his Master back to the fore. But it was the despair that hit him hardest, unlocking an emotional memory he thought he'd been rid of a hundred years ago: _The sick helplessness as he knelt beside a bed; his Rebecca sobbing inconsolably at his feet in the floor; his beloved only son Adam's small child's hand cold and limp in his unfairly alive one.

_That was a memory of the true Nathaniel Essex's, the fallible, merely human scientist. Mr Sinister had been freed of the burdens of Nathaniel Essex's humanity when En Sabah Nur created him._

_It took all his considerable willpower not to fully stagger. As it was, he was off-kilter and unnerved. He'd dropped the tray he'd brought her lunch upon. He cleared his throat. "I trust you understand the gravity of the situation, then."_

_Alix had not noticed his obvious faltering. She hadn't looked his way at all; hadn't heard the clatter of the tray he'd held in his hand to the ground. _Understatement_, she simply thought darkly while tiredly answering, _"Oui."_ She set to the task of once again locking down this sea of intense emotion she had let out. She couldn't forget it anymore, but she could hide it._

_Sinister left without another word, the tray left fallen outside Alix's cell. _

_Hours and a nap later – with Sinister's notable absence – Alix realised her forsaken and dropped meal with chagrin and a sigh. _

"_Well, _merde_."_

* * *

_(The lyrics in the page break is from "Dance with the Devil" by Breaking Benjamin.)_


	4. Part Three

So, I didn't have time to post before I left to attend a social forum and then drama and life got in the way. Anyways, here goes. Thank you to **Hawaiichick **and **Psyknight **for your reviews!

_And things are set to motion..._

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----i---l-o-s-t---m-y---i-g-n-o-r-a-n-c-e,---s-e-c-u-r-i-t-y---a-n-d---p-r-i-d-e-----

**((PART THREE))**

It had been quite soon thereafter that she had sensed it. Sinister had taken her out of her little cage and ran more tests – things she once again tried to ignore – and then placed her back. His "project," as she consistently thought of it, had taken, she knew. That had been the sense of deep satisfaction that she'd picked up on. …That realisation to her was almost enough to drive a saint crazy. She immersed herself in drawing and reading. Rough pencilings of the city littered her room and she'd gotten to _Queen of the Damned_. Sinister showed three times a day as usual, with a surprisingly more polite demeanour. Still, Alix had pointedly begun to ignore him. Even as he became more gracious towards her, she became more resentful. Occasionally, she'd ask a random question simply to catch him off-guard (it surprised and pleased her she could shake him up so easily, and a hated part of her was morbidly intrigued in the bits of information he dropped here and there) before shutting him out again.

At first she wasn't sure what it was. Just a palpable warmth on the edge of her perception – comforting what with the changes and general situation she was going through and in. It just was there, a formed but intangible glow. Soothing her through the nausea and the damnable mood shifts. The loneliness and listlessness to restlessness. She wondered if Sinister had more minions lurking about she didn't know of – or another prisoner, for that matter – and for a few days subsequent, she'd spent her time pushing her sense – her "empathy," he called it – as far as she could, like casting a net for fish. It was only Sinister's cold void and this pleasant warmth, though. And the warmth felt far too close, she realised, for her not to notice whom it belonged to, had it been another person in Sinister's employ.

Finally, she realised the warmth was with her. With_in_ her.

_Sinister's wer-spawn. _

She'd cried. It shouldn't feel that pleasant, to come from something that evil.

And it went downhill from there.

It was little by little, but Alix slowly began to close off. And even as she physically and mentally slowed down, it seemed her empathy reached out. The drawings were listless lines in the rough shape of the skulls that dominated her surroundings, and the design of the quilt upon her bed. _("Why is this quilt important?"_ – a question she had randomly thrown out during one of Sinister's visits. A pause. _"It belonged to my wife."_ And no more on the subject.) The books lay untouched on the desk. It had been nearly four months. She could just discern a hard concave rise to her once almost-convex stomach, as if she'd eaten a heavy meal. But this was no heavy meal, though. That was a child beneath her skin, within her body.

She felt sick. And at the same time, she couldn't feel hatred.

She felt Sinister approach, bearing her midday meal. She curled tighter into herself. Her morning meal lay untouched upon the desk, where he had left it as she had appeared to be sleeping when he had come that morning. She hadn't been. She been up most of the night, counting the little scratches she had nicked into the skulls along the wall with one of the fountain pens. _Cent vingt-un. _One hundred and twenty-one. They didn't account for every day she had been here, but they did for just about all, give or take a week's days. One hundred and twenty-one days she had been kept in the bloody catacombs in some perverse lab, by a mad mutant scientist and— She had to stop, because the more she thought on it, the more absurd it sounded, and she was bound to start crying. And if she did that, she wasn't quite sure she could stop.

She was done with this.

"You didn't eat your breakfast."

His voice was so cold. How did she ever find him so enticing those months ago? She resolutely stared at the texture of the skulls and bones before her. She sighed. "_Non, je ne l'ai pas."_

Sinister inhaled stiffly through his nose. She felt the flare of perturbed emotion colour the void he was. He had once said something about being "devoid of all but productive emotions" thanks to his master. Evidently, anger and frustration were deemed as "productive emotions," she had noticed. Concern wasn't. She had deduced that any "concern" he felt for her was firstly for his project. If any at all was for her, it was because of her "gift," irregardless of any offhanded "interest" he said he had in her. Humanity surely wasn't even a quality he possessed.

"You _will_ eat your lunch."

"_Je ne vais pas."_

"You will, _mademoiselle. _I will not have you ruining what I have spent nigh on a century perfecting."

She bit her tongue on the petulant "_Faites-moi,"_ at the tip of it. She would not stoop to childish taunts; she was quite certain if she goaded him, "Make me," indubitably he would.

"You _will_ eat, woman! I refuse to let you sabotage my plans!" His fury lashed at her overly sensitive mind and she gritted her teeth against it. But other than that, Alix gave him no satisfaction of a response.

Too enraged to trust himself not to act rashly, Sinister walked through and deposited the tray with a notable punctuation, then swiftly left.

Alix rolled over to her back, hands laying listlessly over the rise of her stomach. Yes, she would eat eventually. If she had planned to stay here, she would consider starvation – but she didn't. She didn't plan to stay here. She did not know how, but she wasn't staying like this.

* * *

Sinister had just returned to his office when he was brought up short.

"_Sinister."_

The geneticist bristled at the steely, authoritative tone of the vision before him, a mental projection, much like a hologram. While his Master's broad face was set perpetually in a purple-jawed scowl, Sinister could tell by how even further the lines of his mouth drew down and the deep furrows in his wide brow that his Lord Apocalypse was most displeased.

He tipped his head in respect. He prepared to defend himself against his Master's disapproval. "My Lord—"

"Your niceties do not placate me, Sinister," Apocalypse interrupted with a sneer. "I expect your presence before me at once, _servant_."

Sinister found that his teeth set on edge at such a simple word, _servant._ He forced himself to incline his head in acceptance of his Master's demand. "May I inquire as to why, _Master?"_

Apocalypse evidently did not notice or simply saw no reason to care about the slight edge the British mutant put to his sire's title. Sinister reckoned of course he didn't; it was a rather _human_ thing to do, and Apocalypse was beyond such.

"I am all but truly omniscient, Sinister," informed Apocalypse with a pompous air. Sinister took care to school his expression, to conceal his disdain and seething loathing while Apocalypse saw fit to continue. "I _made _you, Sinister. Without me, you'd still be that mere mortal Nathaniel Essex, dithering over being ostracised for his visionary genius and wallowing in pathetic sorrow for his family. I made you more than that, Sinister. You would do well to remember. As it had been said, what I hath made, I can take away. And you are always indebted to _me – _a debt which you cannot repay beyond obedience_._"

"As you say, my Lord," Sinister conceded. It was a matter of time before Apocalypse would suspect his servant was considering a mutiny. But what would Apocalypse do? Sinister had meticulously-kept copies of notes and genetic stores, across the globe, in a myriad of places. He felt confident that should Apocalypse take it upon himself to try and impede his workings, he could start again.

He just hoped that his Master wouldn't take it upon himself to "teach" him about the consequences of insubordination, with a display consisting on destroying Alexandrie and his almost-completed new incarnation before him.

How he did hate when his work was crushed right before he could show its glory. Especially this. This would be his defining work. This would be a body with a chance against Apocalypse.

Well, better to comply sooner than later. With a careless wave of his hand, a tesseract of black pulsing nothingness appeared, like a seven-foot tall rip in the very fabric of reality, and Sinister stepped through.

* * *

Alix felt when Sinister left. She did not know that he had gone, simply that the void of his signature, still flushed with anger and – she thought annoyance as well? – simply disappeared.

It was unnerving. The loss, as well as the fact that she had become so accustomed to it.

But it was gone. Alix sat up, the realisation slowly fully sinking in. _He was gone. _

And not a moment later, there was a sizzle and the forcefield flickered, making her jump, and then shorted and faded away.

Alix raised a suspicious eyebrow. This wasn't happening. She looked down at her freckled arm and pinched it. _Merde!_ No, she was awake. What the hell was going on?

Rubbing at her stinging forearm, Alix cautiously approached the now-open wall. There was no hum, no feel of static to indicate that the field was still up. She picked up an apple from the tray on her desk and gave it an underhanded toss.

It passed straight through.

_A cheval donné, on ne regarde pas les dents,_ as _Grand-mère _had told her now and again. She wouldn't. Sparing a glance down up the hall and down it, Alix started out, but quickly turned about and grabbed the quilt before purposefully striding down the hall in the direction Sinister came from everyday. _Merci, bon Dieu_, she silently thanked, wrapping the quilt about her shoulders. _Merci beaucoup. _She consciously had her gift cast out – something she would have never thought to ever do before this ordeal, but something she was quite certain could save her now. Sinister's signature had vanished – and she wanted to be far from here before he returned.

So concerned with being alert to the feel of a return of Sinister, she was caught almost off-guard by the unfamiliar signature that suddenly appeared before her. She pressed up against the wall she knew the other person was beyond.

_Suivre,_ she heard in her head. Follow. She clapped a hand over her mouth in surprise, startled at the French command when she had for months conversed in English and the fact that it came from within her mind, but not from her. _N'ayez pas peur; obéir._ Do not fear. Just obey. She mentally examined what she felt from this entity, this person with the ability to talk inside her head. There was a strange resignation to the emotions, a muted feel. But no evil or coldness emanated from it. Just purpose. As if it had a job to do and simply would do no more than that.

Why, she wondered, had she never felt them before, though?

Pushing the question aside – she knew there were certainly things in this world she'd never know nor understand – Alix made her decision. Slowly, sticking with her "don't question, just accept it" plan, and buoyed by the person's non-malevolent but potentially helpful signature, Alix walked round the corner.

A pallid, wizened man stood before her, his body half obscured by a long blackish-brown cloak and stringy, thinning white-blond hair falling into his face. "_Venir. Suivez-moi." _

Swallowing, Alix plucked up the courage to speak. It was that streak in her, that streak _Grand-mère _always cautioned could bring her trouble, the inability she tended towards to simply go along with something, her defiance and dubiousness.

_Obviously, I don't do it _enough_, Grand-mère, _she absently thought bitterly. That, she would work to change. From now on.

Her voice sounded almost foreign to her, stringing so many words together out loud in French. "Who are you? And how do I know if I can trust you?"

A long sigh blew wearily from the man before her. "I have no name. And I simply do as bidden. I was told to guide the girl from the catacombs, as this once was my home and I know it well. That is all. But we are wasting time; come."

Alix felt no dishonesty, only that same resignation, in the man's words. He turned away and started walking.

Alix knew she was at a disadvantage on her own. Though she had traipsed parts of the catacombs here and again, she did not know them well, and she certainly did not know Sinister's laboratory. Evidently, this no-named man knew a way out. Besides, he was frail-looking – perhaps if his signature did turn to be misleading (which she doubted), she could overpower him. See just how well that manipulation aspect of her gift could be put to use.

There really was no other choice:

Alix followed.

* * *

Sinister appeared before the forgotten temple that housed Apocalypse in the heart of Africa. Immediately, separated from the girl, he found he regained that implacable, emotionless demeanour he'd become accustomed to since his transformation. Indeed, her ability was far more pervasive than he had previously considered.

He stored the observation away for later notation, squared his shoulders, and entered.

Little did he know that while his Master lectured him on obedience – he had caught wind that the geneticist's play with DNA and cloning had gone from mere thuggish bodyguards in his employ to empowering the British mutant himself (an obvious try at one-upping his Master, which a deity such as Apocalypse saw himself did not suffer lightly) – the powerful godlike mutant had already set his servant's punishments into play. It was something Apocalypse had come to realise: that Sinister would never respect him with the submission he deserved and required, not as such a man completely of science. Yes, Apocalypse believed in the science as well, but he also believed in power. And power required others' belief – true and complete, fearful belief – not only knowledge. It would also be why Sinister could never successful succeed him. He didn't care of others' emotions for him. His flaw.

As he had waited, he had dispatched his own underlings. While he spoke now and Sinister did his best to seem to dutifully listen, a handful of the geneticist's labs were likely now in ruins. The notes from all – and, indeed, Apocalypse knew them all – were being erased or burnt. But best of all, Sinister's "project for his perfection," as he seemed to consider it, had been let out and led from his Parisian catacombs laboratory, which would also be laid waste to once the girl was clear. Apocalypse mentally smiled. He indeed hoped that his errant servant would think his Master had destroyed all his hard work. Firstly, Sinister would set to re-collecting and re-archiving all his copious knowledge. That would take some time. Years, likely. And then, perhaps, he would find that the girl and the child supposedly his genetic superior still existed, and had simply been out of his hands all that time. How frustrating. Perhaps he would learn that they had died. _That_ would be a pleasant outcome – to Apocalypse, at least. The idea of Sinister's superior growing up with a will of his own also suited him. But for now, the preternatural mutant was content to let the winds of chance blow as they would. He dismissed further contemplations of the outcome. He had done as he so wished for now.

* * *

_(The lyric in the page break is from "Terrible Lie" by Nine Inch Nails.)_


	5. Part Four

Wow, I updated something! Totally not _Nova_, though I'm working on that. ...I'm not going to lie, this chapter? Not my favourite. But I've never liked interrim chapters, even though that's what makes a story and propels it, right? Weird, yeah. Thanks to **Saturnian Solitude **(thank you!) and **Hawaiichick **(next chapter will be what you were wondering on) for your reviews, all those ages ago, and everyone who's alerted/favourited this. Next chapters shouldn't be so hard to flesh out (I hope) and there's only three parts left anyways.

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_-c-h-a-n-g-e-s-c-o-m-e-/-l-i-f-e-w-i-l-l-h-a-v-e-i-t-s-w-a-y-/-w-i-t-h-y-o-u-r-p-r-i-d-e,-s-o-n-_

**((PART FOUR))**

Alix would never forget how surreal stepping out of the catacombs into the velvety pre-dawn of Paris was. She crept the stairs leading from the tunnels she had woken up within four months before, the stone solid and cold under her bare feet, dazed, wrapped in Sinister's wife's blanket. Hesitating a couple steps from being completely back into society – humanity, civilisation, reality – Alix glanced back, wanting to wish her saviour thanks, but he had vanished as suddenly as he had come. Turning back toward the street, purpose locked itself firmly into Alix's mind as she took a deep breath and let her fears go with it. With that, her mind clicked firmly into that cunning survival mode with a vengeance.

Most of the shops were still closed – from her many years of being a denizen of the dark and twilight hours, she reckoned it to be somewhere round four or five in the morning, closer to the latter.

She needed clothes. She needed currency. And she needed to get the hell out of Paris.

Quickly, Alix took to the nearest alley, eager to get from the street's lights and curious eyes she was sure to draw. Safely amongst territory she'd always know well, she wandered down a-ways, finally stopping when she came across a low-end clothier's. She picked the back door's lock – a trick a boy had taught her one night, maybe ten years before. His name had been Remy. Alix thought that he'd likely been arrested or killed by now. She had never gotten to thank him; his moment of kindness, of teaching a young girl new to the life a lesson to keep, it had saved her numerous times. Stealing she came by easily enough. With what she had often thought of as her feminine charm, she'd been able to get into no small number of rich people's rooms, but sometimes – sometimes one just needed the hands-on method. Picking locks was a skill, an indispensable one at that.

The shop was quiet, and she found the back door took her straight in the shop, as opposed to into a storeroom. The big storefront windows unnerved her and she eyed just a shade short of frantically for the storeroom. She caught that there was a room behind the cashier's counter. Good enough: that made it basically one-stop shopping. Grab an outfit, grab the starting cash from the drawer or the petty cash probably under the counter. She would garner more from pockets on the street as she headed towards the airport.

Alix padded over to the counter quickly, avoiding being in direct view of the windows. There was even a key left in the register. She pressed the button to open the register without a sale – knowledge courtesy of a seduction of a shop manager or employee or several – cupping her hand over the register tape's feed to mute the sound and catching the drawer as it opened so it didn't shoot out. Her nerves were so shot – she didn't need more reason to be jumpy. She smiled and slipped the cash from their slots. _Silly shopkeeps, _she admonished, amused, pulling the key chain from the drawer and flipping to the larger key obviously for the lock on the cabinet below.

What wasn't so amusing was, as she unlocked the lock, the storeroom door opened. She whirled about – lock in hand – to be face to face with a stock boy. He couldn't have been more than fifteen, with a splotchy baby-face under a mess of brown hair. She had been so focused on trying to stay calm and focused herself that she had forgotten to pay attention to her personal radar. The boy gave a small shout and dropped the bundle of clothes he had been carrying out to the floor.

"H-h-how did you get in here? You're not supposed to be here! What are you doing?" It was almost amusing how his voice cracked. He looked her over, obviously unnerved and confused by what exactly this woman was doing standing in the closed shop in what looked like little more than the old quilt wrapped about her.

Alix was now completely alert to the boy's emotions. They were a mad swirl of fear and responsibility, shock, confusion and pity. …That wouldn't do, a prideful part of her railed. She hated being pitied.

"Hello. Hey. Young man – don't be afraid of me; calm down." She consciously pushed a feeling of calm acceptance on him. "_Manipulation of emotions," he'd said. Well, let's see._ She felt the change in how the boy felt in her mind as he relaxed due to her suggestion.

"Why are you here?" he asked again. "How did you get in here? I'm the only one that's supposed to be here – I'm only here to make the boss happy; he's always bitching that I never do my job. What are you doing here?"

He was growing agitated again and Alix sought to distract him, sought to find a balance between physical distraction as well as continuing her mental ones. "What's your name, _chér?_"

He blinked. "Remy," replied the boy. "Remy Lefebvre."

Another Remy. Well, maybe he'd be as much of a saviour. "Remy," Alix greeted gently, telling herself that if this boy would only go along and succumb to her influence and just not fuck this up for her, she'd name her child for him. The boy still had a guarded look, and Alix pressed the feeling of trust and acquiescence further. "Remy, please. Think nothing of this." As she spoke, her words precise, she noticed that his eyes had glazed. "Do you understand this, Remy?"

"Oh, yes, ma'am. It's not a problem."

She was getting somewhere. Privately, somewhere inside her a cheer went up, as simultaneously a shudder at how easy – and powerful – this was. "You are so kind, _chéri. _All I need is enough to get me set and I will be gone. Just helping a woman in need, _n'est-ce pas?" _

"But of course."

"And there's no harm in that, _chér._ Now, go – do your job. I'll soon be gone. Like I was never here." _Hope to God this works._ She pushed harder on a sense of purpose – of productiveness and duty – and hoped it would overshadow any emotion in reaction to her presence. She didn't really think that emotion manipulation was as far-reaching as manipulating minds. Much more temporal, emotions. But she could hope. If she diminished the emotion directly associated with her, maybe…maybe he might just forget _her._

As he walked past, she lifted a key on the lanyard dangling from his pocket. He went to put out the stock he had pulled, and she quickly pulled cash from the safe beneath the counter with that key. She then selected a plain outfit of a white too-large blouse and brown twill trousers, a matching jacket and a pageboy cap. The money disappeared into the inner pocket of her jacket and her long auburn waves disappeared, twisted up and tucked into the cap. All the while she kept projecting on the shopboy: _work, work, focus, focus._ It was tiresome, she realised. _Just a moment longer. _And then she slipped back out the back door, young Remy still hanging up blouses and purses.

No sooner out the back door, Alix retched onto the ground. Such a concerted effort to misdirect someone emotionally wiped her out. She leant back against the bricks of the building, wiping a sleeve across her mouth and gathering herself.

_Dear God, or anybody Above, watch over me._ She hadn't prayed truly in quite some time, but she was now. Hopefully her fervent earnestness now would make up for years of straying.

Alix swallowed, pushed off the wall, and headed into the day.

* * *

Walking purposefully but inconspicuously down the streets, Alix's mind had slipped into a space she felt comfortable in. All she saw as people had begun to populate the walks were potential marks, means to an end – that end being financing her escape from this place to somewhere far, far away.

"_My child."_

Alix halted in her tracks, a deer in psychic headlights. Grand-mère.

"_Give an old woman a chance for farewell, _chére." Alix swallowed, moving once again. She couldn't risk it – couldn't chance Sinister finding her because she paused for a sentimental goodbye. It wasn't—

"_I see you out of France, _ma chére_. You can see me, just a moment."_

_Grand-mère, _though mysterious and cloistered, had always been there at Alix's need, whether she sought the old woman out or not. Besides, the woman had a sense about the future of things, and maybe she'd impart something more concrete for Alix's desperate fortune than she had ever before.

The old woman known to the wayward and…"different" urchins of the Parisian streets simply as _Grand-mère _had a reason to seek them out and counsel them: She too was "different." Ever since she was a young girl herself, she had seen things that could and came to pass, and heard and spoke to others without words.

What shesaw were not absolutes, but rather…high likelihoods. But that was the reason she saw such: because, if so desired or needed, she could sway that likelihood in a new direction. (Hence her lifelong quest to quietly seek out those whom were different, those whom life might abandon from nurture and to the wilds.)

Unfortunately, though, some things – some things are simply fated.

As she felt young, troubled Alix's mind fix on her garret, a memory seared unbidden through her mind: one of her first meetings with Alexandrie Delacroix.

"_You've a deep destiny line, my dear. Deeper and clearer-cut than most, and many do not have it all. …Odd, though."_

"_What's that? That someone like me is – 'divinely favoured'?"_

"_The Powers That Be do not discriminate their choosings based on the _life _of one, but rather their _essence_, my child. You'd do well to keep that in mind. …No, dear, it is odd your destiny line runs so clearly, when your life line reads so shortly."_

"_I suppose I'll accomplish great things before succumbing to the hazards of the trade." _So flippant – defiant to mask her unease. A double-sided trait: she never would outwardly fold against any odds, but conversely, her bravado in herself was not as fixed, and it shone through the cracks. _"All in a girl's work." _That wry smile of hers had faltered as she realised the old woman saw through her – those blind eyes saw through the pride and viewed only the uncertain girl underneath the streetwise woman she had to present.

"_I suppose so," Grand-mère_ had muttered. _"Never underestimate the abilities of a person, especially one life has moulded in hardship and destiny."_

That was the problem, though. Even with a gift such as Alix's – the talent she had to feel the nature of a person – even so, people _always _underestimated. It's just what people did.

Moments later, there was a tap at the door and Alix let herself in. As she came forward, she tried – as she always, always had – to block her mind. Alexandrie was not reserved about the fact she disliked the woman's ability to see through her façades mainly because of how loudly her mind was contradicting her. _"I'm fine," _was completely blown apart when her mind was still reeling from a night of being misused.

"How are you, _ma chére?"_ _Grand-mère _asked as Alix took a seat. As she sat, all her forced walls sort of deflated. Not in defeat, but wearily.

"You already know, _Grand-mère, _I'm sure. Spare me from the details." There was a pause, and a blossom of something—

"Can you do that, _Grand-mère? _Can you take away the memories? You told me that you couldn't once before, but _si'l te plait_" —her voice broke, something like a sob escaping— "_Si'l te plait_. …_Si'l te plait?_" Alix couldn't hide the tears. Even though the old woman didn't see them, Alix still felt hot with shame at breaking down.

"My child, you know that I cannot. And besides, I can see you already have begun so yourself."

"Brick walls don't hold forever, _Grand-mère. _What they guard isn't _gone; _it's just hidden. …Like me."

"Sometimes they hold longer that expected, child. …You shall have other things to occupy your mind—"

"And something that will always remind me of it!" She slammed her hands down on the table between them, rattling the teacups and pot. "If this comes to pass, how will I ever be completely rid of those memories, _hehn? _How, _Grand-mère? _I think it likely I _won't!"_

Alix's hard breathing and sniffles were all that split the air for nearly two minutes. When _Grand-mère _spoke again, it was quiet, and pointed.

"…Do you remember what I once told you, Alexandrie? About yourself."

Alix snorted derisively. "That I was a whore destined for great things."

"That you had a _destiny_. I told you: it does not matter who you are in this life, Alexandrie. What matters is that there will be something important to the world contributed by you. You may never know it, my child, but there will be. Of this I am certain."

"What good is that then? What? I'm still just a means to a fucking end!" Memories flashed formlessly across her mind and she recoiled, falling deathly silent. _Grand-mère _felt it – saw. As Alix halted, she came round to her side and took her in a hug.

"Hush, child. Hush."

It lasted only a moment, and nothing defined truly had scarred her mind, but the _emotion _of it all felt like it had nearly drowned her. It was terrifying. Alix came back to herself, held by _Grand-mère, _gently rocking back and forth.

"What am I going to do?" the broken whisper was undirected, forlorn.

"You will do what you know how to, Alexandrie. You will survive. You will surprise yourself."

_Grand-mère _pulled away and Alix wiped furiously at her streaming eyes and running nose with her shirtsleeves.

"And…?" Alix didn't really know what she was asking, but maybe she'd get answers to questions she didn't know she had.

"A boy. I see that, but his fate is up to you, my child." A wrinkled, dry hand patted her cheek in reassurance. "Now go. France is not where you shall stay. I don't know where, but you will. _Au revoir, _Alexandrie, my child."

"_Au revoir, Grand-mère." _The tears came again as she embraced the hunched old woman in goodbye; this was the last they would see of each other, she knew.

"Never forget the gifts you have, child. You know their potential now: exercise it."

"_Oui, Grand-mère." _ The old woman walked her to the door, and Alix took a breath as it closed behind her. Chin up, back straight. She was gone.

* * *

"_Where does one go if they wish to get lost?_" she asked herself aloud, waiting in the English airport. Somehow, she'd made it. If asked, she couldn't recall just how she'd gotten here. She just knew that she was in England now, and had picked a good deal of cash, credit and IDs along the way. She probably had given away something in cash and the trade she knew to numerous drivers to get here, too. She had reverted completely back to just a basic existence, like when she was a child. It was about getting to the next day, getting somewhere safe. Now she was at an uncomforting standstill, cash and credit still on her, but down to one ID she had snagged. It was of a woman who looked fairly much like her. _Roxanne Montague _was the woman's name, not that it mattered. But Alix liked the name, Roxanne….

She cast her "sixth sense" out wide, the emotions of everyone about her battering her, but she couldn't risk not being on edge.

"Where does one go if they wish to get lost?" Places rolled in and out of existence on the departure board.

"Well, ma'am," some middle-aged American man who'd come to stand nearby said with a chuckle, "I usually choose Las Vegas or New Orleans, myself. But right now, I'm looking to get back to Austin."

_New Orleans._ She liked the sound. And not long after, charming and still not know just how the world she managed it, she'd found herself inbound to just the place.

* * *

_(The lyrics in the page break are from "Momma Sed" by Puscifer.)_

_Which is so awesome, the next chapter will have some, too.  
_


	6. Part Five

So...I finished this up not too long ago, but I haven't got the Internet at my disposal at my new home. But, I'm offering this up to the faithful still there, and hoping it satisfies. It's the first fic I've finished in a while.

Thanks :) And special thanks to **CaptMacKenzie, peppymint, anaer, **and** Skreech **for the enthusiasm and reviews.

**Edit: **Sorry about the formatting issue, guys. I didn't realise it and was in a rush when I originally posted.

* * *

**[PART FIVE]**

_-momma-said-like-the-rain-(this-too-shall-pass)-_

_Roxanne_ Delacroix, no longer Alix, found herself falling into the shadier side of New Orleans quite quickly and quite easily. There were many shadows to find outside the neon glow of the signs through the French Quarter. And so, not only did she find people who took her up on her quiet, lash-fluttering offerings, she also became part of the community of the same. It was normalcy, of the dysfunctional sort.

Until two weeks later, she heard a word that sent her stock-still for a moment.

"_You're a mutant."_

The woman looked like a normal human, but a lot of mutants did, Darcy had found. She herself looked normal – well, except for the cheetah-like rosettes covering her whip-lean body (easily-enough concealed, even if it did get sweaty wearing long sleeves in the summer), her claw-like nails (easily camouflaged) and yellow cat-eyes (sunglasses, hello). Ford, her little tagalong, was normal-looking, too, all gangly and tousled towheaded. He could sense other mutants, though.

"You're a mutant!" Ford blurted at the woman, whom Darcy reckoned was as homeless as them, and probably a prostitute, though she didn't like to pass judgment like that. Ford lacked a filter something terrible. Darcy slapped her forehead as the woman jolted and froze in shock. Why she tagged along with him. If he wasn't like a son…

"Ford!"

"She is."

Slowly, the woman turned about, sharp hazel eyes wide and haunted, taking them in. "_Excusez-moi?"_

"A mutant. Whaddya do?" Ford asked conversationally. "All I can do is tell that y' are. Darce here looks like a wildcat and I know a lotta other people who do pretty far out things. What do you do?"

The haunted look in the woman's eyes faded more into bewilderment. "Really, I'm not—"

Darcy cuffed Ford upside the head and took control of the conversation. "Honey, there's a lotta us, 'specially in a place like N'awlins. We're known for freaks." She slid down her sunglasses, and winked a slit-pupiled, yellow-gold eye. "Now, I excuse Ford here's lack of tact and basic social skills"—a pointed look in the twenty-year-old's direction— "but don't be scared. We're a family out here in the streets, us muties. Come by Della Rae's and she'll set ya up if ya ain't got a place to sleep. Ya can pass at the shelter, which is a blessing, honey – but if they find ya out, they don't play fair, honey."

Roxanne took in the information, mouth still slightly agape in disbelief. "Oh… Okay?"

The older woman shook her head and looked heavenward with a scoff. "Well, damn. Ford ain't got no manners and neither do I, ramblin' at ya." She extended a long-nailed hand. She wore fingerless gloves. "Darcy. Whatcha name, honey?"

"Rox – Roxanne."

"Roxi. Alright, then. Sorry 'bout that ambush. Pro'ly scared the hell outta ya, yellin' things like that at night to a stranger. We'll be along. Just remember, the streets ain't the safest place, I'm sure ya know. Della Rae's is up toward Tremé, 'tween Iberville and Lafitte – take St Louis. If ya know the Cemetery, y'know the area. Just ask. It ain't the lights and sounds of the Quarter, but it's a roof over ya head, honey, and no questions."

With a wave, and Ford's pout, the two continued on, leaving Roxanne stunned and off-kilter.

_Mutant. _

_He _had used that word, describing what she could do, implying that it wasn't quite as freak of a happenstance as she had taken it for. But to be face-to-face told that? By at least one person who _did _look _quite_ out-of-the-ordinary? What world had she slipped into?

Roxanne trembled, on the verge of tears. What had happened to her fucked-up normal life? When did being a mutant come into play, and why did it seem to mean such awful things? She looked like everyone else – hell, she had _thought _she was just like everyone else, just a little better at getting her way. She wrapped her arms about herself, feeling the hard rise of the life inside her – the life _he _had put there. Surely it was a mutant, too.

The bile rose suddenly and she barely could turn away from the street before she was vomiting all over the sidewalk. As soon as dry heaves hit, she wondered down into the alley, away from eyes that saw her as nothing more than a pretty, helpless drunk. She didn't want to feel their shock and disgust and pity. She didn't want to feel the darker passing feelings of wanting to take advantage of her state.

The bricks scraped against her back as she slid down, knees drawn up toward her chest, making herself as small as possible. She closed her eyes and focused with all her might on shutting herself off as much as she had been casting herself out since escaping the catacombs.

Long moments passed with Roxanne simply rocking herself side to side, trying not to "feel." Finally, the emotions faded, like throwing water on chalk lines and she gathered herself together. She needed to find a restroom to rinse her mouth out at and needed to find a…"suitor" to take her home for the night. The air had changed and it felt like rain.

She used the restroom at the bar up the corner from the alley she'd disappeared into. Going back onto the neon-lit street, she set to attempt part two of her plan, which a large palm tightly gripped her shoulder.

"Now, 'ey there, sweetheart. Whatcha doin' wanderin' int' dives like dat in the middle a th' night all alone, now? Ain't safe for such a pretty woman." A lecherous, nicotine-stained and rot-gapped smile within his grizzled dark beard underscored the last statement.

Roxanne tried to pull away as unassumingly as possible, but the burly man only gripped tighter, coming round to take her other shoulder, his dark brown eyes boring into her, up and down her.

"Where ya goin', sweetheart? C'mon, now. Don't act like I don' know that you know that _I _know…'xactly why someone like you is out like this, huh?"

Pretence of trying to slip away was given up and Roxanne openly struggled against his grip. She lapsed into French, her own words adding to her sudden panic. "_Me libérer, me libérer!"_ Her fists thumped against his broad chest inefficaciously.

"Whoa-ho-ho. Preddy little minx's gotta preddy li'l accent t' go with it, eh, Mike?"

Roxanne eyes widened in horror. There was another man and she hadn't felt him. …She had shut herself down and let herself open to such a moment as this, and it's inevitable conclusion. _She hadn't sensed him. So stupid – so, so stupid…_

Like flicking a switch, Roxanne surprised herself by how quickly she took off the mental dampener on her "ability." And it was like flipping it all the way to "high" – she felt everyone, and the two men before her had such dark, driven minds they threatened to drown her.

_No. Not like this. _

Roxanne threw her hands against the man's chest and much like she had with the shop storeboy in Paris, projected at the man with all her might – and what she mentally threw at him were his own suffocatingly lecherous emotions. As he reeled back in shock, but hands still upon her shoulders, she remedied that impediment by kneeing up, and sending him to his own knees.

And then she ran like hell.

She was small and easily darted between the tourist throngs and across the streets. The men evidently gave up quickly, because within five minutes after she began her mad dash, she couldn't hear their exclamations of _"Catch that li'l bitch!"_ anymore.

Roxanne only stopped though when her ankle threatened to give. She stopped to catch her breath, gain her bearings. She'd only been here almost a month and still didn't know much of the city intuitively. But she found herself at a corner, and she laughed aloud as she saw the cross street: St Louis. _"Take St Louis," _the cat-like mutant woman had told her earlier. Seems so she would. She took a step out to read the street she herself was on. Rue Royal. Roxanne knew enough to know that Royal wasn't too far up from the river, and Tremé was _not _near the river. Rue Bourbon – the street she had come from, was in the right direction. She started down St Louis, and when she passed Bourbon, she kept on.

The Cemetery seemed huge as she walked past it, the first drops of rain plopped heavily in her windswept hair. For a moment, she just stood and looked into it, until she picked up on a person walking near. The person felt like a sunny disposition, but wary, whoever they were, and she was going to probably unnerve them further.

"Hello?" she called across the street. The figure stopped. "Do you know—"

"Hey!" the person pushed back their hood to reveal the bright face and flaxen hair of the boy Ford from earlier. "Girl from Bourbon Street!" He waved her over enthusiastically. "C'mon, I'll show ya Della's."

Della Rae Martinique was a buxom lady, with a motherly, warm round face and a red kerchief over her hair.

"Ford, I done tolt cha: Don't be bringin' me in no more strays now, li'l boy," were the first words out of her mouth as Ford approached through the large kitchen, out of the rain, Roxanne in tow. Her words were punctuated with jabs of a wooden spoon in the air, back still to them.

"Don' mind Della – bark's worse than her bite and all," Ford said in a stage whisper.

"I'ma show you a 'worse bark than my bite,'" ranted Della in response as she turned about. "Well come in, girl. Don't just hide back there like a wallflower."

Roxanne stepped forward, chin tilted up. It was her default stance when she felt people were judging her.

Della's brown eyes took her in, head to toe and back, and she tutted as she came forward. The girl was a bit rain-soaked, a bit scrawny, with vibrant auburn hair and the prettiest hazel eyes. While she lacked a well-kept lustre, there was a glow to her, and Della noticed how she kept her arms crossed with her shawl pulled round her. Girl probably thought she was disguising how she was showing, but she actually brought attention to it.

"Alright, _bébé, _letcha guard down a bit; I ain't gonna turn ya away." She put a reassuring hand on Roxanne's shoulder, and no matter how she knew the woman had a warm disposition and meant no ill to her, Roxanne still flinched. Della's eyes softened and she dropped her hand, stepping back.

"Now, whatcha name, honey-chile and whatcha need?"

"My name is Roxanne."

"That's a right pretty accent ya got, Roxanne. Ain' so southern as to be from round down heah, but definitely French, huh?" When Roxanne offered no comment, Della raised an eyebrow, but inclined her head in deference to the girl's privacy. The people who lived under her roof had plenty they wanted to be secretive about, from where they'd come from, their names, their abilities. Hell, there was a girl here and she only knew the poor child's name because she had had it Sharpied on her tattered backpack.

"And…Ford and Darcy tell me I could stay here?"

"She's a mutant, too!" interjected Ford.

Della shook her head. "Done told you that ain't _criteria _to stay, boy."

"It helps," he muttered.

"G'on now – ain'tcha got somethin' t' get up to? Go on, little boy. This is womenfolk talk, now."

Roxanne couldn't help but smile as Della swatted him out of the kitchen with her spoon and came back and escorted Roxanne to the table.

"Nosy little runt." Della shook her head, but had a motherly smile upon her face. "Now child, I don't need t' know much to letcha stay. I don't ask f' rent, but if ya'll contribute, I appreciate it." Once again, she eyed Roxanne up and down and she felt the surge of…concern, she thought, emanate from Della. "Y' look like ya know the streets, dear. Y' ain't got to no more. An' I don't wantcha to feel ya gotta do that to contribute. But I encourage ya – Lord I sound like I'm tryin' t' be ya momma." Della put her hand over Roxanne's upon the table, hovering but not touching. Roxanne caught her gaze in appreciation of the gesture.

Della continued, "I ain't gon' tell ya how to live, _bébé. _But I got an idea that ya've gotta reason t' want t' do better." She gave her a pointed look.

It suddenly burst forth from Roxanne, the sudden tears and sobs. Della was either unfazed or recovered quickly and came round and took her up in a hug. "Now, _bébé,_ come now. Shush, shush." She rocked her back and forth and the sobs kept coming. "Whatever it is ya runnin' from, y' got a home now, baby. You and y' baby."

The keening wail at that told Della exactly what she needed to know. "Oh, honey." This girl had some things going on all right, and this baby she tried to hide was a good deal of it. "Poor chile. Shush, shush. …C'mon, darlin'. Lemme putcha up in a room f' the night. You come down in th' mornin' and we'll talk. 'Bout whatever – anything an' everythin', y' hear? But y' need some rest, honey. Come on."

She took Roxanne to a room on the ground floor, near her own/office. "Lay y' head, chile. Tomorrow's a new day."

Roxanne nodded, hardly seeing anything through her hot tears. Della guided her down and tucked her in, taking her shawl. Roxanne didn't care; she had stolen it off a chair outside a café, anyway. She cried herself to sleep as this woman she just met watched over her, a guardian in her new life she had desperately needed.

* * *

Della Martinique wasn't a mutant herself, but she liked to do what she could to help the misfortunate of the New Orleans streets – as many as she could, anyway, and mutants were a disproportionate amount.

Mutants were people with "abilities" or attributes that made them distinctive from the rest of the general population. And just as varied as the common human was ("flat-scans" or "frails" were the more derisive term for "normal" humans, Roxanne learned; "muties" and the generic "freak" of course, for mutants), mutants had even more variance. It was as if you took anything upon the earth and that your mind could imagine, and that was the range of what mutant abilities and appearances were.

Roxanne also, at Della's insistence, had gone to the free clinic. She went through it mechanically, and it always took a couple of hours for her to come back to herself afterward. Della had voiced her concern the first couple of visits, but Roxanne eventually had gathered herself enough to tell her that it was something that she couldn't discuss and Della left it at that.

The months passed, and Roxanne fell into an actual _normal_ life. A bed to come home to – a home to come to. A job – she had started to work as a waitress at a small café in the Quarter – her first real job. (Of course, she had sort of…"charmed" her way into it, but other than her personal information, she worked hard and true.) …A family, of sorts, even. And soon, a child.

She didn't know how she felt about that. Thankfully, her days of breaking down spontaneously at the serious contemplation of the fact that come October, she would give birth to something _that a madman had implanted within her _had passed. She had instead repressed that little detail (whether that was healthy or not), and was adjusting to the idea that she would soon be giving birth to a life inside her. A little life that was her responsibility.

And most likely, also a mutant.

It was when she recalled that, that memories of how the child had come to be threatened. She hoped it was innocent. Was it truly just her child, or was it considered a creation? Would it be like _him?_

She didn't know. She would just take it day by day.

* * *

October 1st was the day she delivered her baby. And as the local mutant-friendly midwife handed her the swaddled baby, she realised that he (_"A boy, _chère – _y' gotchaself a baby boy!"_) was indeed a mutant.

"_Mon Dieu. Il a des yeux comme le Diable,"_ she whispered under her breath. Horrible, but true: Burning red eyesset in black squinted up at her between a button nose and a cap of hair that still was the colour of dried blood. The hair, though, testified he was hers, with his red hair like his mother's. …But his eyes – they testified to what she had told herself deep down, but never voiced: this child was her punishment. She had borne the Devil's child.

She closed her eyes and crossed herself…but held the baby tight. As she opened her eyes again, the baby looked up at her in what seemed like wonder, little rosebud mouth opening and closing. Not a scream, just…sweet and quiet and…

Hers.

He might have been forced upon her, some weird experiment that she couldn't wrap her mind about, but he was still part of her. _Her_ son. _She _had just had him. This baby…he was a defenceless child that _he_ had wanted to create for _his _own purposes and would have done heavens knew what to.

Whatever she made have thought against this baby, she couldn't find it in herself to leave him left to a world where _he _might find him. Not when she recalled it was this child's aura that had kept her near-sane in her captivity. She couldn't deny that.

Even so…the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Roxanne figured she was already damned, so what was the harm in trying to do something good?

Two weeks before Halloween, two weeks after she had had the child, she left the baby on the steps of St Louis Cathedral, and waited in the shadows. Churches took in children. Would they take in the Devil's child, though? _Non, you foolish fille. They aren't going to take him in. _…But still she held an irrational hope. It would be things better all the way around. She wouldn't have the reminder of the mad doctor, and the child would have guardians.

Unsurprisingly, it went as she had logically expected it to.

The priest picked up the squirming bundle, looking around for any sign of the person who had left it. There was a moment of awe and pity, of course, as he focused back on the child. And then the blanket was gently lifted back from over the baby's face.

There were a lot of Latin cries and genuflecting, and the baby was hastily put back where it had been found, almost dropped. The priest disappeared back within the sanctuary of his church, rosary clutched tight. Roxanne swept forward as soon as the priest was out of sight (though she could still hear the man's alarmed cries about the Devil's own child being at the door) and gathered up her child, hurrying away into the night.

As she headed back toward Della's, she looked down at the little bundle, who hadn't once made a sound. So quiet, so accepting.

"Guess I'm stuck with you, _mon enfant. _You _are _my _bébé_, after all." She sighed heavily, knowing it sounded resigned – and it was. She shook her head. He was her penance.

A little hand tugged on a coil of her hair and she looked back at him. Just a little baby. He didn't know anything of what had just happened, of why she had felt the need to. Maybe…she could live with the fact he was her son.

Time would tell. Time would tell.

As she came through the back door into the kitchen, Della eyed her from where she sat sipping chicory coffee at the table. Sometimes, she could swear that woman knew everything, mutant or not.

Della shook her head. "I seen you carryin' this kid 'round like he's a parcel f' delivery ever since y' had 'im. …How 'bout y' make the poor chile a real boy and give 'im a name, heh, honey-chile?"

She hadn't. They had asked, and she'd replied she was thinking about it. Roxanne sat down at the table, baby in her lap, babbling.

_Make him a real boy, _Della said. She didn't realise how true the words were – or maybe, since it was Della, she did. Damned woman. She knew how to make a point.

"Remy," Roxanne finally whispered. She had sworn to the heavens she would, and so did. _Remy Delacroix._

Della came over and caressed the boy's wispy auburn hair and put an arm about Roxanne. "How ya doin' then, li'l Remy?"

* * *

_(The lyric in the page break is from "Momma Sed" by Puscifer.)_


	7. Part Six

**[PART SIX]**

_-precious-and-fragile-things-/-need-special-handling-_

_**(A year and a half later)**_

"Hey, _bébé! Comment ça va?_ Eh?"

"Maman!" On unsteady legs, the little boy ran in an adorable waddle over to her. Roxanne swept up her son and kissed his freckled nose.

"_Merci, _Della, for watching him."

"Y' say that every day, girl, and I ain't complained 'bout it, so stop thankin' me. 'S what family does," snapped Della good-naturedly. She looked up from the linens she had been folding (and that Remy had tried to build a fort out of) over to the young woman. Just more than a year and Roxanne Delacroix was a whole different person from the fragile and defiant girl whom had showed up in Della's kitchen. It was interesting how the world worked – funny how things turned out if you gave them a chance, guided them. She had thought for sure at some points she was just housing a ticking time bomb, or that once Roxanne had the baby, she would up and split and leave him behind – especially given his red eyes. But she had embraced him finally, and blossomed with it. The girl didn't even stay at Della's boarding house anymore.

Roxanne kissed the toddler's forehead. "Ready to go home, _bébét?" _She had held her job steady at the café in the Quarter and had rented (with a bit of her emotional sway gilding the deal) a little apartment outside the Garden District. Third floor, with a balcony outside. A dream home – for this dream that was somehow her reality.

"Home, home," Remy giggled. He'd grown up quick, she felt. She could just remember how small he had been, wrapped in blankets when she had tried to leave him on the cathedral steps. It seemed so long ago. Somewhere the boy had gone from being a creature to her cross to bear to the little boy whom had her wrapped about his tiny little fingers. He was talking – as much as any year-and-a-half old child "talks" – and wobbling about. He wanted to run before he walked. It had taken a lot of falls and just hauling him up and slowing him down to get through that he simply would not accomplish that without walking first. (He gave it a good go, though.) His bright red-brown hair, all flyaways and cowlicks, framed his face that hardly ever a frown graced. And his red eyes, well, they never changed. And she had come to terms with it.

She had found her grounding force in this life, and come more into herself and her nature as a mutant, as well as an almost-regular woman and mother.

"Don't forget 'em." A tiny pair of sunglasses was waved in the air in one hand as Della, multitasking as always, tutted over a tiny shoeprint on a gingham blue sheet in the other.

"_Mer—"_

"You 'mercy' me again, and I'ma make you think _merci._ Now, g'on. Little boy needs time with his mama, away from all these hooligans and a crotchety old woman. Git."

"_Oui _See you Monday, Della."

* * *

Roxanne wasn't lost on the irony of the fact she rather hated tourists. She also hated drunks. And drunken tourists. She got that she was a pretty woman – she'd known that all her life, and used to work it. With motherhood, an even more alluring glow evidently had graced her.

She wanted to kick everyone who commented on it squarely between the legs. Mainly, because most were lecherous bastards. And their advances ranged from annoying to invasive and quite frightening. As she made her way home from a double shift at the café, she had the maddening prickle of the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, her ambient radar of emotions sharpening on lascivious lust emanating from someone nearby – rather strongly, but odd. Instead of something crystalline – well, crystalline as a focused thought could seem, it felt more mercurial, murky.

Not thinking, she cut suddenly right, down an alleyway. Too late, she looked up and realised in her distraction she had chosen a dead end. _Merde, merde, merde. _Roxanne continued to walk, eyes frantically darting side to side to see if a way of escape lay about.

"Hey, honey!" came a call from behind her.

"What's a fine-lookin' lady doin' walkin' alone this time a night?" came another.

And that would explain the strength of the feeling, why it felt off. There was more than one person pursuing her – four persons, she saw as she turned about.

"Fuck," she spat quietly. Stiffening her stance, Roxanne stood tall, chin defiantly pointed.

"Ain'tcha a pretty little catch," murmured a third man, short, scruffy and lanky in build, like a humanised ferret.

_Sure, _Roxanne thought. _And I don't have a desire to catch _anything_ from or for you._ The men moved surreptitiously forward, crowding Roxanne – crowding her senses. She doesn't even notice herself backing away, overwhelmed, until her back hits the wall and she emits a sharp gasp of shock.

Automatically, she lunges to run, and a harsh hand seizes her shoulder and throws her back against the wall. "Now, why, ya ain't even said thank ya for the compliments, miss." It's the second voice, the one that had inquired into her late night trek alone – the most salacious mind of the bunch, and evidently the leader, from how the other three have fallen back.

"Now we _said,_" repeated the man, face in Roxanne's, "that it's curious for a nice-lookin' gal such as yourself t' be wanderin' about at this time a night, and it's rude t' not at least pay thanks when a gentleman compliments a li'l tamale such as yaself." His hand tightened about her shoulder, thumb bruising against her collarbone, and then slid into her hair as his other hand pawed at her.

Roxanne yanked herself against his grip, mind whirling, but the fist in her hair only tightened. "Let go of me, _connard!" _she cried, throwing out an elbow.

The man turned, not letting go of his grip, so that her blow was only glancing. He sniggered. "Think I hafta say no t' that, ma'am." His buddies laughed as he leant in to kiss her. Roxanne stubbornly turned her head away, wet lips sliding across her chilled cheek, making her skin crawl as much as her mind was. She _pushed _mentally at him, but unfortunately the effect was lost as he backhanded her for turning away, breaking her concentration. As he gripped her chin to hold her face in place for his second attempt, all she could feel and emote was fear: _her_ fear and panic.

"No, don't—" Roxanne couldn't see, her welling tears blinding her.

"_Step away fr'm the woman!" _A strident, authoritative baritone cut through the moment. The man looked over…

…and was caught neatly in the jaw by the swift sweep of a black lacquered cane.

"Holy shit," Roxanne heard one of the men whisper – the ferret, she thought.

"It's the Patriarch!"

"_Git!"_ The possessor of that striking baritone and cane evidently was of import; Roxanne watched from her knees through streaming eyes as the men scattered at the curt command.

As the men fled, her saviour came over and knelt beside her, offering a hand. Roxanne didn't meet his eyes, still shaking, though his chivalry blazed like a comforting flame in her mind. He was still a man, and she was still reeling. He wore a long, black leather coat, and dark, velvety looking pants tucked into calf-high black leather boots.

"_Ma petite chèrie, _are you alright?" He rose slowly to his feet with her, his other hand taking Roxanne's.

Roxanne nodded, gathering herself and meeting the man's concerned gaze. He had deep green eyes that seemed to house an old, old soul, though his face was only lightly lined, but weathered. His long black hair was shot through with a bolt of silver here and there about his temples and sprinkled his goatee.

"_Merci, monsieur. _I—I—"

"No need t' thank me, _chèrie. _I know this town through and through, an' while it's th' most _bon_ city I've ever come across, it definitely possesses a darkness. Them _hommes, _they be part of the package." He brushed a thumb across her cheek, smearing away a tear. "But then there's gems like y'self that only make th' city brighter." He offered a rakish, crooked grin, and Roxanne mustered a feeble smile of her own in response.

"_Merci."_

"Whatcha name, _chère?_ And where can Jean-Luc LeBeau personally escort y' to this evening?"

Roxanne felt him out, trying to see if there was anything sinister behind this front of chivalry. He felt honest through and through – a bit of mystery in general, but nothing malicious, definitely nothing malicious toward her.

"I need t' go t' _Madame _Martinique's, M. LeBeau. D'you know—"

"Oh," cut in Jean-Luc with a smile, "I know Della Rae." The look in his eyes was faraway and bemused. He shook his head at some private memory of his own and looked back to Roxanne, offering an elbow. "Ready t' go…?"

"Roxanne," she supplied finally. "Roxanne Delacroix."

"Roxanne Delacroix." Jean-Luc rolled the name across his palate. "Well, Mademoiselle Delacroix, le's not dally."

Roxanne took the proffered elbow, and let this Monsieur LeBeau, in all his assured graciousness, lead the way.

"Roxanne! Girl, I been worried about you! This _bébé_ a yours has been cryin' his damned eyes out f'r the past hour outta nowhere!" Della was waiting at the doorstep of her tenement, and had obviously been watching for her wayward charge like a concerned mother.

"She got a bit waylaid, Della Rae," Jean-Luc spoke before Roxanne could. He slid his elbow from her arm and took her hand and gave it a formal, gentlemanly kiss. Roxanne couldn't help her blush, so she smiled and hurried up the stairs to Della's.

"Patriarch!" gasped Della. She bowed a bit, but Jean-Luc waved away the formality. Roxanne had already ducked inside.

"My Lord, does that girl even know who walked her home t'night?" Della asked aloud, shaking her head.

"New t' town, then, is she?" Jean-Luc inquired, leaning against the wall by the doorway Della stood in.

"Not exactly – but she ain' a native. She's always done a bit a her own thing."

"Ah."

"Thank y', Jean-Luc, for seein' her over here. I worry 'bout that damned girl jest about ev'ry night."

"She's a bright girl, too pretty for her own well-being. She can't help dat."

"Oh, I know."

"She, ah…'one a y'rs,' then, Della Rae?"

Della's face shuttered. "Don't go askin' me no more, Jean-Luc LeBeau. I let y' know most of my gems, but she ain't one f' y' to mess with."

"Della, y' wound me."

"I do my tithe t' the Thieves, an' I honour y' as my Patriarch. I don' really know what y' Guilds do, and ya've always been a good man t' me, Jean-Luc. But this girl? She's special, and she's damaged, and she don' need no mo' drama in her life than what follows her already."

Jean-Luc shook his head and held his hands up in mock-surrender. "I assure y', Della: I meant no harm. Jes' curious. Let this old cat have his moment t' paw."

"Moment's over, Jean-Luc."

"And I'll be goin'." With that, Jean-Luc set back across the yard, until a call halted him.

"_M'sieur LeBeau!"_

He turned back. Roxanne stood in the doorway beside Della, a child on her hip. She waved. "_Merci _once more, m'sieur." She took one of the child's hands and made him wave, too. "Ma Remy thanks you for what you did for his _maman_ tonight." With a thoughtful smile and a kiss to her child, Remy's, forehead, Roxanne turned and disappeared back into the house. Della followed behind her.

"Don't you even dare think on it, LeBeau," forewarned Della to Jean-Luc, her eyes hard. And then she shut the door behind her.

Jean-Luc stood frozen for a few moments longer, dumbstruck. Only one thing was in his mind: That gal she had saved tonight had a son…

…a red-eyed son just as the Antiquary had foretold of.

Shaking his head, Jean-Luc filed the information away – Della's steely warning heading it – and set home.

In the shadows, someone else remained, only leaving after Roxanne left for home.

* * *

_(The lyrics in the page break are from "Precious" by Depeche Mode.)_


	8. Part Seven

**A/N: **Heed the genre, luvlies.

* * *

**[PART SEVEN]**

_-if-God-has-a-master-plan-/-that-only-He-understands—/_

_-I-hope-it's-your-eyes-He's-seeing-through…-_

He followed her about for maybe three months total. Only a few weeks more after the Patriarch took her to Della Rae's. And then it could wait no longer. It consumed him, her beauty, her fire…and his own desire to hold it, to see it in his hands.

To extinguish it.

He could wait no longer.

So one evening when he knew she'd be off from work, he took the three flights of stairs up to her room. Stood before the door, as he had so many times before. _3C _glittered in chipped plated-gold at him from a dingy navy door. He followed the curves of her apartment number with his eyes, as he had done so many nights, so many days, so many times before. Followed the curves of the doorknocker.

But, unlike all those times before – this time…this time, he knocked.

And moments later, with her riotous auburn waves, jewel-tone eyes and angelic, open face, she answered…

…and he pushed his way in.

* * *

Jean-Luc LeBeau had thought about it long and hard for the past month and a half. Was he really going to be the one to take this poor girl's child just to secure his own pursuits? Would he really be such a cruel person?

_The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, as they say._

It was true – a harsh, but vital truth. This child could ensure the future of the Thieves Guild, according to the Antiquary. The one with the red eyes would destroy the Guilds if left unchecked. If presented to the Antiquary, that couldn't happen, and the Antiquary would take care of the tithe to the External on behalf of whatever Guild presented him with the prize.

Too many Thieves had been lost to Chandra's disdain of the Thieves Guild's tithe. Too many Thieves had been lost to the Assassins because of her favour aiding them.

It was an opportunity he could not overlook.

As much as it galled him, he would do this. He would take the child, regardless of what he felt, of what the child's mother would feel and say and do – he would take the child, and he would secure his Guild's fate by presenting the boy to the Antiquary.

"I gotta awful feelin' 'bout alla dis, Luc," Mattie Baptiste cautioned as he donned his duster and had his hand on the door. The seer and healer hadn't been told of his plans, but as she did often, she voiced her sage opinion nonetheless.

Jean-Luc sighed as he pulled down his goggles. "Got an awful feelin' 'bout doin' this m'self, Mattie."

His awful feeling was met and overwhelmed: Jean-Luc never anticipated what met him after he picked and opened the balcony door to Roxanne Delacroix's third floor room.

"_Mère de Dieu,_" he gasped, taking an involuntary step back, one hand immediately coming up to cross himself as he bowed his head briefly. He regained his composure after murmuring a prayer and, reluctant but dutiful, brought himself back to the moment – and his eyes to the grisly scene before him.

Roxanne lay limp and debauchedly dishevelled across the bed, blouse ripped open and skirt half-slipped down from where it had been hiked up. Her flaming hair was fanned out round her head like a fiery halo. A spray of blood across the wall and headboard was slowly drying.

Stepping lightly, Jean-Luc silently approached the young woman's cooling body upon the bed. Those fierce hazel eyes gazed blindly above. _D'ya see Heaven, chère? _he wondered absently. Poor thing probably wouldn't get a pass with her life, but if there was forgiveness to be had, he believed she merited it. Her blood stained the bedclothes a deep crimson and ruby and stiffened some of the waves of her hair and folds of her ruined shirt. The thick slash across her throat was black with blood, and her lips – as milk-white pale as her freckled skin had become – were starting to tinge blue.

"_Je desole, chère,_" he whispered softly, reaching out to close her eyes. As he crossed the air above her, a sudden cry startled him.

The boy.

The reason why he was even here. He had come to steal the boy away and present him to the Antiquary. And consideration of Roxanne's attachment to her son had been what had given him pause. _Well, reckon dat don' matter now, _he thought morbidly. Ignoring his heavy heart, Jean-Luc LeBeau followed the cries. They led him to a cabinet in the kitchen. Crouched in the back corner inside was the boy, those prophesised eyes glowing in the shadows.

"Maman!" he screamed in terror. Almost before Jean-Luc could react, the boy darted out; Jean-Luc's nimble thief's fingers just barely caught the boy by the neck of his T-shirt.

"Wan' my _mère! _Maman! _Maman!_" the boy was hollering as Jean-Luc scooped him up.

"Hush – hush, now, _fils._ Y'r maman—" He swallowed, not at all at ease with himself at what he had to do. _Have t' do it, _Jean-Luc reminded himself. _Have to do it._ Big red orbs stared at the Cajun Guildmaster, lips quivering, hovering on a holler. "Y' maman's gone, chile…" Jean-Luc was at a loss. He wasn't even sure the child would understand. Even if he did, it would take a while for it to fully register. It had been that way when he had had to explain it to his son Henri that his mother was gone. But Clare had died months after Henri was born, and Henri had not thought much on it until he was about four or five.

The little boy wasn't listening, though. "_NO! _Wan' Maman! Mama—Mama—Mama! _Maman!_"

"Look, chile!" Evidently Jean-Luc hit the right pitch with the sharp rap of what he considered his "listen here, now" voice. Remy stilled.

"Wan'…" His quiet plea trailed off, lost in a fit of sniffles. The cherub lips pouted, tears welling and spilling from those big, unnerving red-on-black eyes. Jean-Luc watched, mesmerised for a moment, half-convinced that the boy's tears would be blood. Yet, in spite of the devilish eyes, very human tears brimmed russet eyelashes before staining the boy's cheeks. No demon blood, here; just a fallen angel's rainy tears of sorrow.

"Now, _bébét, _chu listenin'? Y' maman's gone, _fils._ And I' come t' getcha – take ya somewhere new, _d'accord?_"

There was a loud sniffle and a sigh. With that sigh, it seemed all the fight and fire left the boy. He laid his head slowly, heavily on Jean-Luc's shoulder. "Cold," he murmured, barely audible, distracted. "Gone."

"What's y'r name again, _fils?_ René?"

"I Remy," came the quiet, automatic answer.

"Remy, Remy. Listen, Remy – we're goin' now, alrigh'? Don' look back."

"_Oui_…." Remy understood. The man was taking him somewhere – this man he'd seen about and knew Maman had talked to, so he wasn't exactly a stranger. He also understood his mother was gone. He _felt _it, even if he couldn't express it. And with the reassuring warmth his mother had always imbued him with gone, Remy wasn't much up to going against anything.

His maman was gone.

* * *

_(The lyrics in page break are from "Precious" by Depeche Mode.)_


	9. Outro

**[OUTRO]**

_-it's—just-a-broken-heart,-son-/-this-too-shall-pass-away-_

Jean-Luc looked down at the little boy, who was sprawled across the sofa in the parlour. Big ruby eyes looked out sightlessly from under limp auburn bangs. He'd finally completely ceased his crying an hour ago. Not for the first time, Jean-Luc was appreciative of Mattie's presence. The ample Vodoun priestess and Guild ally sat beside the boy, her hand rubbing soothing circles on the child's back. She was leant toward him, dark brown-almost-black dreds falling across and obscuring her face from his view. He could hear her voice in a low whisper, a soothing, melodious cadence.

Slowly, the big red eyes that had dully been looking through Jean-Luc LeBeau blinked owlishly and then slowly, gently like a feather falling, they slid closed. Long thick lashes fluttered against high, pale, freckle-dusted and tear-stained cheekbones. As the boy drifted off to sleep, Mattie's piercing grey eyes turned up to the Thieves Guild patriarch.

"I know whatcha got t' do, Luc. But d'ya undastan' whatcha'll _need _t' do?"

Mattie was considered part of the upper echelon in the Guilds. She understood the sacrifices and duties necessary in a way Della could not.

"I gotta present 'im t' the Antiquary, Mattie."

"I know dat, Jean-Luc. But jus' as y' gotta hand dis heah po' _bébé _ovah t' dat man, y' go'n make sure t' get 'im back one day, you hear me?"

Mattie spoke aloud Jean-Luc's own unvoiced sentiments. Giving the red-eyed boy over to the Antiquary for his collection and his aid to the Thieves Guild over the Assassins' was necessary. But Jean-Luc heard the hushed rumours about the old man. That he was a letch, a monster, and the children he kept no more than listless zombies for his twisted pleasure. The Guildmaster had tried to push those tales from his mind, but they were there, in the dark corners, rankling.

Mattie looked back to the fretfully slumbering boy, passing a hand through his vibrant cinnabar hair, calming him. She didn't look back at Jean-Luc as she firmly stated, "You promise me heah dat y'll get dis boy back, _d'accord?_"

It was in the form of a request, but Jean-Luc understood the demand it was.

"My oath, Mattie Baptiste."

Grey eyes held him severely.

At that moment, the quiet _uh-hem _of a throat being cleared split the tension. "Poppa?"

Jean-Luc turned to face his seventeen-year-old son Henri, standing in the doorway. "_Oui, _Henri?"

Henri glanced at the little boy on the sofa before meeting his father's eyes. "De Antiquary's man phoned; he'll see y' in an hour. He say get de boy an' meet him at 'is conclave."

"_Bien."_ Jean-Luc met Mattie's gaze. The healer stood with matronly grace and gathered the child. He whimpered and stuck his thumb in his little mouth. Jean-Luc indicated to Henri with a nod to take the boy from Mattie. As Henri did so and headed out the door, Jean-Luc in step behind him, Mattie stalled the Guildmaster with a surprisingly strong hand at his elbow.

Green eyes met grey. A moment of silent conversation – reminding him of his vow.

"…I don' know when, Mattie—"

Mattie shook her head. "Just bring him back, Luc."

Jean-Luc nodded, and with a lump in his throat and a heavy heart, left.

He didn't know if he would ever be able to get the child back from the Antiquary, but Mattie seemed to have faith that the boy would be returned – she didn't say it out loud, but Jean-Luc caught it. Mattie had a sense about things, and he wouldn't doubt her.

He just didn't know if he could believe it himself.

An hour and fifteen minutes later, the slumbering toddler was handed over to the cloaked man, his spindly, ghost-pale fingers grasping the slight body with thinly veiled greed.

"Your gracious offering will be well rewarded, _Monsieur _LeBeau," the crackly voice said.

"_Merci beaucoup, Monsieur _Antiquary. The Thieves Guild is grateful, and glad to be of service."

A wicked smile of yellowed and browned teeth gleamed beneath the cowl. Jean-Luc suppressed his shudder.

"_Au reviour, Monsieur _LeBeau." And the Antiquary melted back into the shadows, Roxanne Delacroix's little boy with the rich burnt-red hair and the eyes like embers sucked into the darkness, property of the shadowy man now.

With a heavy sigh, Jean-Luc LeBeau turned away.

It was eight years before Jean-Luc brought Remy back home, and only eight more until he was forced to send him away once more.

* * *

_(The lyric in the page break is from "Momma Sed" by Puscifer.)_


End file.
